


The Inevitable Decay

by bell (bellaboo), bellaboo, usomitai (bellaboo)



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Drabble Sequence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-04-13
Updated: 2006-04-13
Packaged: 2017-10-02 03:49:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellaboo/pseuds/bell, https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellaboo/pseuds/bellaboo, https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellaboo/pseuds/usomitai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"In the end, she cared too much for him."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Inevitable Decay

**Author's Note:**

> Written after watching the first half of season one for 31 Days. The theme was "When are you going to love you as much as I do?"

In the end, she cared too much for him. Or, to be more precise, she showed too much of that caring. With Greg, in order to get and stay close, you must allow that distance. He needs the comfort of the outright insults, the assumed blasé indifference; then he can be comfortable, secure in that he is still an anti-social nut case without a single personal obligation in the world.

Because Cameron wouldn't play that game, wouldn't let pretenses hide her feelings, Greg couldn't help but be curious. It was different, no one had ever tried that tactic on him before. However, once the caring had lost its shiny coat of newness, once it became predictable and, worse, oppressive, he pushed her away. And no matter how hard she pushed back, all that she got back was even more pushing. They canceled each other out.

She remembers how firm his hands on her had been, decisive. This is a man who was absolute in his self-certainty, and it reflected in his movements. She remembers the calluses on his fingers, from holding pens, gripping canes, fiddling with his hand-held Nintendo. She used to caress those calluses when he let her hold his hand-- always in private, always in a moment of vulnerability. Of course there is nothing private about hands, but that's how he was. What was his was his, as was what was everyone else's. He could invade, they couldn't.

Losing Greg hurt more than losing her husband. This, in turn, hurt Cameron even more. She had vowed to love her husband, in sickness and in health and in death. Had her feelings been so transient as to let him go at the first new relationship she started? Was she that weak? It wouldn't be for months, when the memories weren't sensitive and she could examine them once more, that she would realize it was because Greg, unlike her late husband, was technically curable. With her first love she knew that their time together was limited. The ending was inevitable. She was prepared for it. Greg would always hobble, but he was alive, he was breathing, and he would around for the foreseeable future. His sickness wasn't physical, it was emotional. And in her heart, she had wanted to cure him. But Greg's disease had turned out to be just as hopeless as her husband's.


End file.
